Today's Scripture Reading (June 27, 2025): 1 Chronicles 6
In a preaching class during my seminary studies, I
decided to tell a Pentecost story from the perspective of one of the witnesses.
When I floated the idea with my professor, he asked me whose point of view I
wanted to use. I told him, and his only response was, "Well, that should
be interesting." The character I had chosen was a prophet named Agabus.
When I preached the sermon, I heard one of my classmates mutter, "Is that
even a real person?" The answer to my classmate's question is yes, but he is
only mentioned twice in the Bible; both mentions are in the Acts of the
Apostles. One of the reasons I chose him was to provide me some extra leeway in
how I treated him and the story. But there is no doubt that much of my
presentation would be a fictional account of a real event. (In the sermon, I also
gave James the Lesser a new fictional nickname, Theodore.) I found it to be an
exciting project
It
is sometimes a fun exercise to examine some of the extrabiblical material about
certain minor characters of the Bible, for which the Bible itself provides very
little information. However, once again, these extrabiblical accounts are
likely to be highly fictionalized. There might be a core truth hidden somewhere
in the stories, but we have to be extremely careful in what we do with this
information. Much of this literature aims to teach a lesson to God-fearing
people through a fictional account of these individuals, much like my sermon
from the point of view of Agabus. Agabus existed, but that is all we know about
this early Christian prophet.
Stories
exist about Amram outside of the Bible, but little is known about this
patriarch of an essential Israelite family, and some of the information is
contradictory. The Bible tells us that Amram married his aunt, Jochebed. Amram
and Jochebed had three children: Aaron, Miriam, and Moses. But that is really
the extent of our biblical knowledge of the man.
Outside
of the Bible, we seem to have contradictory stories about the father of Aaron
and Moses. One story insists that Amram lived a sinless life and that because
of his godly life, his body was protected from decay. But another story tells a
very different tale. This story insists that when Jochebed was three months
pregnant with Moses, Amram divorced his wife, declaring that he had no desire
to bring babies into the world if they were only going to die. According to
this tale, it was his daughter Miriam who shamed Amram into remarrying
Jochebed. (Why do I hear someone singing "Daddy don't You Walk So Fast").
I
called these tales contradictory. However, some scholars don't see the
contradiction and hold that both these stories could be true. Or neither. The
choice of what we choose to believe really does lay with the reader. But maybe
Amram deserves our grace, living in a difficult time for all of Israel, as the
nation waited for the one that would lead the country out of slavery and into a
home of their own.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 7
Personal Note: Happy 66th Anniversary to
my parents, Duane and Shirley
No comments:
Post a Comment